A rather curious posting appeared over on the Atlantic's entertainment pages this week. Titled Jack White's Women Problem, it set out the case against the former White Striper, Raconteur, Dead Weatherer and lately Blunderbussing solo artist as a man waging a personal war against the ladies.

White, its author insisted, unleashes vitriol on any woman who threatens his "control"; his songs reveal a man who wants women to be "quiet and submissive" while storing up special rage for the "modern-day woman, with her sexual freedom and iPhone [representing] power and choice". His professional dealings with female artists, meanwhile, show nothing more than a fellow who delights in shaping and controlling women. And furthermore: "As a lyricist [he] has been obsessed with women for more than a decade now, perhaps to a greater extent than any other rock star in his generation."

It wasn't the most robust of arguments, fuelled by supposition and leaps of speculation, and the cherrypicking of White lyrics to fit the cause. But it's worth disputing, because this type of character assassination is too easily and too casually spun, and perhaps more importantly, it bleeds all the joy out of rock'n'roll.

Listen to any of the most revered artists of the past 80 years, be they male or female, and you'll see their work tells of the great bewildering battle of the sexes: that Bessie Smith sure had a man problem. And jeez, was that Bruce Springsteen ever hung up on the ladies. And exactly what did Bob Dylan mean about breaking just like a little girl?

I listened to Jack White being interviewed on the Today programme earlier this week. Asked if the material on his first solo album was inherently more personal, he took a deft little step to the left and spoke of how once upon a time songs were recognised as stories, tales dreamed up about mining disasters or shipwrecks, rather than the gut-spilling troubadour confessionals we've grown accustomed to.

Whether or not this is true in the case of the songs on Blunderbuss, or if his response was a double-fox or a tail-turn, who can say – certainly not since Dylan has an artist played with our perceptions the way that White does. But I do think we need to be wary of squeezing the literal truth out of songs; rarely are they fossils belonging to a certain time or place; a love song can encompass many lovers; to paraphrase Robert Frost, a blues can begin as a homesickness, a lovesickness, or sometimes just a lump in the throat.

So is White, as the Atlantic article suggests, all riled up over Meg White and Karen Elson? Possibly. But these are women he has been married to, and we tend to have a few feathers to spit in the direction of those we love and have loved; and ultimately, this is an issue of proximity rather than gender.

If you wish to pore over White's lyrics you'll find plenty of examples of tenderness to counterbalance any venom. Springing to his baby's defence in Truth Doesn't Make a Noise, he snarls: "The way you treat her, it fills me with rage, and I wanna tear apart the place." Or as the protagonist of You've Got Her in Your Pocket, seeing his own flaws and failings, and so petrified of losing the girl he loves that he wants to keep her to himself: "But now she might leave, like she's threatened before / Grab hold of her fast before her feet leave the floor / And she's out the door / Cause you want / To keep her in your pocket …" These aren't examples of misogyny, but of the types of extreme emotion that love can inspire.

More broadly, White has been a great champion of women in rock'n'roll – from his "big sister Meg" playing drums in the Stripes, to Alison Mosshart fronting the Dead Weather, to the work he's done with Loretta Lynn, Wanda Jackson and Smoke Fairies, to name but a few.

It's undeniable that White's music is fired by the difference between male and female – he makes this quite clear on his current tour by employing two separate male and female bands, and it was equally clear in the White Stripes, a duo forged by the energy between its male and female players.

Often his lyrics do reveal a yearning for a time when the roles of the sexes were more distinct, with all his talk of chivalry and gentlemen and jackets in the mud, and of how "every little girl needs help climbing up a tree". But nowhere does he assert that the masculine is superior to the feminine, rather that there are differences to be celebrated.

I love the masculinity of White's music. In an era of Coldplays and Keanes, I love the unabashed virility of it. And the reason I always adored the White Stripes was that there was such raw sexuality to it – a kind of primal femininity to Meg's drumming that met perfectly the masculinity of Jack's voice and guitar. It was music from the gut and the groin.

So does Jack White have a woman problem? No more than any man ever had a woman problem, and no more than any woman had a man problem. What has always driven great art, great literature, great music has been the fire between the sexes. No matter what the social equalities we achieve, the pay gaps diminished, the glass ceilings broken, we're never going to dampen that fire. And nor should we want to. For in the push and the pull of gender lies a glory and a magic.